


Take the Devil in Me

by Golbez



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Elemental Magic, Mindfuck, Multi, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 23:46:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1960803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golbez/pseuds/Golbez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosa had always known her Desert Fever would one day return - she did not anticipate that it would bring with it a cacophony of voices in her head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take the Devil in Me

i cry for angels to save me 

**take the devil in me**

  


"Well, I don't think I'm going mad. Perhaps it's a matter of being a mage?"

"No offense meant, Lady Rosa," said Porom, "but even in Mysidia, hearing voices isn't considered normal."

Rosa sighed. The Queen of Baron, bedridden by a resurfacing disease and hearing voices in her head. She had known that the Fever would return one day, had expected to feel its flame once more, but the voices...

"So strong a flame cannot be doused by so weak a flow."

The voices were new. They had first come to her one night, as she lay in bed, shivering even as her skin burned and the world spun. The voices had clawed at her, taken over her mind and drowned out the world around her.

The bedroom suddenly seemed much too small for her.

_She grasps for breath, arms flailing against the darkness as hands grab at her kicking feet. She's about to break into the light when something slimy wraps around her right foot, and then she's being dragged, down and down and down…_

Rosa shuddered, and Porom was quick to touch her shoulder. Healing magic flowed from one White Mage to the other, running through Rosa's body and engulfing it. She breathed in deeply, filling her lungs. Porom's presence and magic provided a cleansing effect, clearing her mind. She was in her bed, in Baron Castle. Porom was at her side. She was safe.

"Lady Rosa," said Porom, voice soft.

"I'm all right," she replied, "I'm all right."

 _Are you, really?_ asked one of the voices in her head.

***

Cecil didn't know about the voices, of course. She made sure of it. He had enough matters to attend to, not the least bit of which was acquiring a sand pearl from the Damcyanites. He didn't need to know that his wife was losing her mind.

 _But he should be here, he should be at my side,_ she thinks one night, laying in bed as the embers in her chest smoldered. _Typical Cecil, gallivanting off halfway around the world when I need him most._

She blinked, her own thoughts - were they truly hers? - echoing away in her head. Shudders racked her body a moment later, her disgust at herself for ever thinking that way about Cecil manifesting in bile that refused to rise.

The day after that she worked up enough strength to make the journey to her sitting room, and that was when Cid came to her, carrying a letter that she dreaded to read. Her hand trembled as she broke Damcyan's wax seal on the envelope, and she fumbled with the letter inside as she drew it out.

She dropped it once she'd read enough. Her heart caught in her throat each time she tried to say something, anything, even as she faced Cid's hopeful look.

After a long, long moment, she finally found her voice. "Cecil has abandoned Baron," she said, and the voices began to laugh.

***

Cecil abandoning Baron, abandoning her, went against everything she knew him capable of. She refused to believe that he had no good reason for commandeering one of his own airships and flying off elsewhere.

Yet, no matter how she turned the situation over and over and around and around in her head, no reasoning stood for Cecil, a newly appointed king, to leave his wife and his entire kingdom behind like this.

Did he know something no one else did? The letter mentioned his taking a sand pearl with him. Had he learned of another cure?

The week after the missive's arrival saw her bedridden once again, any pretense of strength escaping her each time she reached for it. Every motion she made sent flares through her limbs, until she felt as though she were nothing more than a pile of quivering ashes given skin. But that couldn't be right. She could still feel her insides burning.

She cried for Cecil, but there would be no answer, not from him at least. There would be a hand against hers, or fingers running through her hair, or a soft voice whispering 'shh, shh,' but she knew none of them were from her husband.

White Magic would occasionally mingle with the fire, she would recognize its nature no matter what, and Porom's constant presence in the spells was not unknown to her either. The child mage's magic was laced with protectiveness and devotion, often times rather aggressive in its motion, no doubt an influence from Palom. She bathed each time in the healing spells, words of power drifting into her mind, efforts to cleanse her. They eased the pain just a little each time, so she ate it all up, grabbing at each spell as if each would be more potent than the last.

The White Magic eased the pain, and she could pretend then that her own magic had not abandoned her weakened body.

***

Leather touched her cheek, and when she looked up, it was into the face of a demon.

"Cecil..." she whispered, though her voice refused to escape her. She felt his hand leave her cheek, then fingers stroking her hair. The man standing by her bed was not as she remembered, encased once more in dark armor she _knew_ he had cast off.

Rosa had feared the Dark Knight's mask before, when Cecil had first donned it and she had thought it would take him away from her. When he was said to be dead and she had feared that the mask would be too much for him to handle alone (for she had been certain he was not dead).

His reappearance in holy armor had drawn sighs of relief from her, and she knew that there were soldiers in Baron who had likewise sighed in relief. These were men who had grown alongside him, who had seen him turn into the kind of man who could wield the demon-forged blades with no remorse. They, too, had feared the Dark Knight's mask, and had feared for Cecil's soul.

She watched him now as he drew his hand away from her, and she saw then the glint of dark steel in his other hand.

She wanted to scream, wanted to leap from her bed and hurry down the stairs, where Cid and her elderly mother had made camp, but she feared that the moment she moved, she'd dissolve into ashes and float away on the winds rushing in through the window -

She watched as Cecil raised the demon blade and brought it down upon her.

***

"Rosa," came a voice through the haze.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she found herself face to face with a man wearing a Dragoon's helm and armor.

"Father?" she called out, and her voice rang against the red walls surrounding her, walls that hadn't been there a moment ago. The word bounced back to her, and she relished hearing her own voice for the first time in so many days.

The Dragoon chuckled, and shook his head. She felt silly to have assumed it was her father right away. He was long dead.

"....Kain?" she called out, and she stepped closer now, reaching a hand out to touch his cheek. Was it him, truly him? She had not seen him for some time now.

His lips quirked into a smirk, and she threw her arms around him, feeling his warmth through his armor. A hand touched her neck, and when she looked up, Kain had disappeared, and the armor in her arms was falling, empty. She jumped back with a gasp, and watched as the helm landed atop hollow metal with a clang.

A breeze ran past her back, and she turned around, and saw Kain standing there, armor glistening, smirk still etched across his face.

"It's awfully warm in here, don't you think?" he asked, and Rosa became aware then of the heat emanating off the walls, of the way they pulsed red and orange, like the flaming seas of the underworld.

"It is," she said, remaining where she was.

He sighed and shook his head, then began to walk the length of the room, speaking as he went. "I had thought you would have removed the fever by now," he said. 

"What do you mean?" she asked, following his path with her eyes.

He came to a stop by the far wall, before turning to face her again. She began to walk towards him, determined to catch him again.

"So strong a flame cannot be doused by so weak a flow," he said.

She froze where she had stepped, the hairs on her neck rising at those familiar words.

"Where did you hear that from?" she demanded.

"You would do well to listen to them rather than push them aside," he told her, "They mean well and care only for your health." His smirk shifted into a smile, and she broke into a run. He turned his back on her.

She reached out and closed her fingers around strands of golden hair, just as he dissolved into wind.

She jerked back in surprise, and without a body to support it, his empty armor began to fall again, piece by piece. Their own cries echoing against the pulsing walls. Slowly, she stepped closer, intending to kneel by the armor to gather up its pieces, but the walls suddenly began to crumble, as did the floor, and the world shook as water rushed into the room, and steam filled the air as it ran over the red-orange liquid that had escaped, and Rosa found herself being swept away by the endless current.

***

She awoke to a dark bedroom, and sitting up revealed the only illumination to be a sliver of sunlight filtering in past the thick yellow curtains over the window. She could just make out Porom's tiny figure resting on a chair by the door in the limited light.

Rosa was about to call out to her when she realized Porom was fast asleep. It was then that she noticed that the burning in her chest had disappeared, and she no longer felt like crumbling into ashes.

Slowly, she pulled off the blankets over her legs, then pushed herself towards the edge of the bed.

A moment later and she was using the wall to steady herself and curling her toes against the cold stone floor, savoring the chill that crept up her legs and arm. She breathed in, deeply, cherishing the way the air filled her. A soft breeze crept in past the curtains, kissing her cheek and lightly lifting her hair.

She wondered for a moment if it were Kain as he had been in her dream. She took a step towards the slumbering White Mage by the door.

"It probably is," said one of the voices in her head. Then another added, "Go downstairs, there's someone waiting for you. Don't wake the girl."

"Hush," she said, then remembered the words Kain had uttered in her dream. She hesitated for a moment, then turned away from Porom, toward the door. Someone chuckled in her mind as she pulled it open slowly. She took another glance at Porom, then slipped out and shut the door.

***

The hall outside was just as cold as her room had been. Rosa wondered, as she walked past closed doors and drawn curtains, where the servants were, why it was so quiet.

She made her way to the end of the hall, where a pair of guards should have stood. She found no one, and even as she descended the stairs, she encountered no maids. No smell wafted rom the kitchens where the chefs prepared breakfast, no birds sang in the gardens where the groundskeepers tended to fauna and flora alike, no metal clashing from the training grounds where the Dragoons and Knights diligently sparred and performed their morning exercises.

"Well?" asked one of the voices when she stopped on the next landing, "He's a very busy man, you mustn't keep him waiting."

"He's in the throne room," said another.

"I will go to this mysterious man of yours in my own time," she murmured, even as her feet turned towards the stairs leading down when she had meant to go forward, to the room at the end of the corridor, where she knew her mother would be, clutching the months-old prince to herself.

There was no change in level of activity as she descended, and she had gone two flights down before it occurred to her that maybe it was better that she had not gone looking for her mother and her son. They might not have been there.

She almost turned back, a tight knot settling in her chest as she continued on. She had not held her son this entire time, and her mother had kept him away, just as she had kept Rosa away from the heavily ill in her childhood.

And she certainly would have turned back, had it not been for the gentle voice that suddenly spoke in her mind.

"Rosa."

Her breath caught in her throat. This was not any of the voices who had haunted her all these weeks. This one was too gentle, too kind, too friendly, not at all mocking, not at all angry...

"Cecil," she breathed, the knot in her chest growing tighter.

"I am here," he said, "Come to me."

She took the last few steps down the stairs, walked forward with her head held high, and pushed the heavy double doors at the end on her own. and felt everything that had happened up to this point, everything she had felt and experienced - she felt it all melt away. 

Cecil stood there, dressed in his dark armor, but his helm was in his arms, and he was smiling at her - smiling so brilliantly, as if nothing had happened in the past few weeks.

And standing beside him, wearing just as cruel a smile, was Kain.

**Author's Note:**

> My original plan for this was a series of one-shots, but now I think I'm going to make this a chaptered fic. The ending to this chapter is a little _too_ much of a cliffhanger, even for me, but the next chapter won't exactly continue on directly from here.


End file.
